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U NC OL L E C T E D A N D O T H E R P OE M S | 171 Human Living Living is doing: Doing the deeds that are human; Not merely the functions of man or the function of woman, But the later and larger work of our nobler order, Work that is measure of progress—Time’s recorder; Connected, specialized, wide in fluent relation, Distinguishing man from man—knitting nation to nation. Living is power’s discharge: The world’s force splendid Pouring, from year to year, through our work unended; Growing from hour to hour as our work is truer, Richer and fuller fruit of the joyous doer. Not for ourselves! the beast may be self-sustaining, But we support one another in boundless gaining. Still we must eat and sleep, and make more people? True; but it needs no preaching under a steeple; True, for us and the beast, a law there is no unloosing; Duty of eating and sleeping and cleaning and reproducing; Law of the animal world under nature’s giving— The basis and background of life—but it is not living! (Woman’s Journal, 2 April 1904, 106) What Counts You may stuff your brain till it jumps the pan, Like over-risen dough, But you’ll never be a better man Till you do the things you know. You may feel your love go round the earth, As a tire goes around a wheel, But the world will never know its worth Till you do the things you feel. Your head may be lord over all the land— Your heart may deserve a crown— But it’s what you do with your actual hands That keeps the whole world down. Men know the ties of our human life, And feel its mutual law, But they do as they did in the brute’s lone strife, In the reign of tooth and claw.26 And women? We know that the world is one, We feel its common heart, But we do our life-long work alone And hold the world apart. (Woman’s Journal, 16 April 1904, 122) ...

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